


A Scarlet Study

by Prochytes



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sherlock (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-04 00:48:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1761051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A room that does not exist may yet be damnable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Scarlet Study

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for _The Avengers_ (2012), _Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D._ to 1x19 “The Only Light in the Darkness”, and _Sherlock_ to 3x03 “His Last Vow”. Originally posted on LJ in 2014.

He makes no wanton heap of his possessions. A mind-palace is founded upon structure, like a song. The Appledore Vaults are a mirrored Camelot – the dungeon delved to music (therefore never delved at all, and therefore delved for ever). If we shall desire to retain the memory of a horse, a lion, an eagle, it will prove necessary to arrange their images in set positions ( _equi, leonis, aquilae memoriam si volemus habere, imagines eorum locis certis conlocare oportebit_ ). 

This particular passage of the Appledore song is organized on a special theme. Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells, and cockle shells

And pretty maids, all in a row.

Each pretty maid has her meed of space. Isolation is what keeps them sharp ( _solitudo conservat integras simulacrorum figuras_ ). The first mind-palace, which Simonides of Ceos built in the long ago, owed its foundation to sudden death: the poet was called outside from a banquet and, when the hall collapsed behind him, found that he could name the crushed corpses of the other diners from where they had been sitting. (One of the dead had owed the poet money. No one ever found that windfall stonefall to be suspicious.) The latest and greatest mind-palace contains within itself, then, an echo of the first, because this stretch of it is all about sudden death.

This is the corridor where the bad girls go. 

Mary Morstan has a file, here. Some of the others have a cabinet. Every now and then he treats himself to a peek:

(MELINDA QIAOLIAN MAY

AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D.  
DIVORCED (SEE FILE)  
FINANCES: UNKNOWN

PRESSURE POINT: >   
MOTHER (SEE FILE)  
PHIL COULSON (AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D.) OFFICIALLY DECEASED 2012-PRESENT (SEE FILE)  
BAHRAIN (SEE FILE))

Bahrain. Very exciting. 

He passes on. 

At the end of the corridor, there is a room. The room is breath-taking. Only appropriate, really: the taking of breath is the reason why it is here. He has never had occasion to use the contents. But he likes to look. 

The centrepiece is Drakov’s daughter. Often we encompass the record of a whole affair by one notation, a single image ( _rei totius memoriam saepe una nota et imagine simplici conprehendimus_ ). Flesh that slickens and quivers, clenches, and is still. 

Delicious. 

There might have been histories where things were otherwise. Where moribund empires really did keep gaudy chambers to play the Great Endgame to its conclusion. But not here. The lions do not roar in Appledore; the eagles do not stoop. There are no vaults beneath this building. H. O. U. N. D. is not a harbinger of Hell. T. A. H. I. T. I. is not magical, and not a place.

( _ut si cruentam aut caeno oblitam aut rubrica delibutam inducamus, quo magis insignita sit forma_ )

Deep in the Appledore Vaults, the place that is not a place, there lies a room that is not a room.

Each of its hundred ledgers is bound in red. 

FINIS

**Author's Note:**

> Latin quotations are from the _Rhetorica Ad Herennium_ , falsely ascribed to Cicero (3.29, 3.31, 3.33, and 3.37); the translations and adaptations of the Latin in the text are my own.


End file.
